Frugal dieting: food tracking
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Most experts/studies/advice-givers agree that methodically keeping track of the things you eat greatly increases your chances of dieting success. Familydoctor.org sums up the reason nicely: “Awareness is an important part of making lasting changes for healthy living. Keeping a journal is a good way to become aware of what you eat, what you do, how you feel and any patterns you may have.” Or in less-nice terms, seeing the horrendous amount of food I eat makes me understand why I can’t lose the weight. For most people, just knowing you’ll have to write it down makes the “just a little taste” seem less appealing. I know it works that way for me.
So, knowing that you should be writing down everything you eat if you want to meet your dieting goals, what are you going to do? Here’s my advice.
Find a tracking method that works for you. I like to track my food on the computer, because it’s organized and gives me the ability to look back over time. Sometimes it’s a hassle, though, if I’m not near a computer or just errecting barriers for myself. Some people will really do better with a small notebook and a pen. There’s always the fabulous PocketMod or the hipster PDA, too. These tactics can work together (I try to write my food down on whatever paper I can get if I’m away from my computer, and then add it to the computer later). The point is to figure out what you’ll actually do and get started.
If you’re inclined to use the computer, you have options (this is the money-saving part of the article). As mentioned yesterday, eDiets [affiliate link] provides a lot of good services, but they charge for them. A free and very comprehensive site that I like is FitDay. They help you track both food and exercise, as well as calculating your nutrient intake and graphing your progress over time. I wrote a comprehensive review of FitDay on Amazon a while ago, and all of my opinions still hold.
The wonderful and free PEERtrainer, which I mentioned yesterday, could also be used as your exclusive food diary. I would personally choose FitDay over PEERtrainer in this case, because if you’re going to bother doing it on the computer, FitDay allows you to be much more specific and does a lot with what you put in (for instance, telling you how many calories you’ve consumed and in what ratio of fats/carbs/proteins). Ideally, you would use both systems to their fullest, tracking your food in detail on FitDay and then putting in a summary over at PEERtrainer for your buddies to see.
Don’t underestimate the importance of tracking your important diet numbers. I’d bet money (and you know how cheap I am) that if you diligently track your food and exercise over time (say, a month) and make even a small effort to bring those two things into healthy ranges, you’ll lose weight. Anyone want to take me up on that? Heck, I’ll do personal diet coaching (seriously, I’m going to be a personal trainer).
If you want to know more about keeping a food diary, familydoctor.org comes through again with their Keeping a Food Diary article.
If you have Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield, they have a website called anthem rewards that allows you to track diet and exercise as well. If you track things regularly, they give you points that you can trade in for things.
Now I’m really wishing that was my insurer. I get really into incentive things.
I don’t know….I dont’ think I would want my insurance company to know such intimate details….they might raise my premium! No thanks.